Code of Conduct for Zimbabwean Media Practitioners
The purpose of this Code is to provide a set of common professional standards of
conduct for media practitioners and media institutions in Zimbabwe.
Media practitioners and media institutions should abide by these standards and the
public is entitled to expect that they will do so. There should be a remedy for those
harmed by media conduct that violates these standards.
This Code will be applied and enforced by the Media Complaints Committee
1.
Interpretation
In this Code:
“media institution” means any institution in Zimbabwe, whether in the public or
private sector, that disseminates news to the public through the medium of a
newspaper and/or other written and electronic publication or through electronic
broadcasting.
“media practitioner” means a reporter or editor employed by a media institution or a
freelance reporter or columnist who is a stringer or writes columns for a media
institution.
2.
Application
This Code will govern the conduct of media practitioners and media institutions that
have agreed to be bound by this Code and to submit to the disciplinary jurisdiction of
the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe.
3.
General standards
a)
Media practitioners must maintain the highest professional and ethical
standards. They must carry out their functions of informing, educating and
entertaining the public professionally and responsibly.
b)
Media practitioners must defend the principle of the freedom of the media to
freely access, collect and disseminate information and to publish comments
and criticisms. They must oppose censorship, suppression of news and the
dissemination of propaganda.
4.
Accuracy and fairness
a)
Media practitioners and media institutions must report and interpret the news
with scrupulous honesty and must take all reasonable steps to ensure that they
disseminate accurate information and that they depict events fairly and without
distortions.
(b)
Media practitioners and media institutions must never publish information
that they know to be false or maliciously make unfounded allegations about
others that are intended to harm their reputations.
(c)
When compiling reports media practitioners must check their facts and the
editors and publishers of newspapers and other media must take proper care
not to publish inaccurate material. Before a media institution publishes a
report, the reporter and the editor must ensure that all the steps that a
reasonable, competent media practitioner would take to check its accuracy
have in fact been taken.
(d)
Special care must be taken to check the accuracy of stories that may cause
harm to individuals or organisations or to the public interest. Before
publishing a story of alleged wrongdoing, all reasonable steps must be taken to
ascertain the response of the alleged wrongdoer to the allegations. Any
response from that person must be published together with the report setting
out the allegations.
(e)
Media institutions must endeavour to provide full, fair and balanced reports
of events and must not suppress essential information pertaining to those
events. They must not distort information by exaggeration, by giving only one
side of a story, by placing improper emphasis on one aspect of a story, by
reporting the facts out of the context in which they occurred or by suppressing
relevant available facts. They must avoid using misleading headlines or
billboard postings.
5.
Correction of inaccuracy or distortion
(a)
If a media institution discovers that it has published a report containing a
significant inaccuracy or distortion of the facts, it must publish a correction
promptly and with comparable prominence.
(b)
If a media institution discovers that it has published an erroneous report that
has caused harm to the reputation of a person or institution reputation, it must
publish an apology promptly and with due prominence.
(c)
A media institution must report fairly and accurately the outcome of an action
for defamation against it.
6.
Right of reply
Where a person or organisation believes that a media report contains
inaccurate information or has unfairly criticised the person or organisation, the
media institution concerned must give the person or organisation a fair
opportunity to reply so as to enable that person or organisation to correct any
inaccuracies and to respond to the criticism.
7.
Comment
a)
A clear separation should be made between comment and opinion.
b)
A comment or expression of opinion must be a genuine and honest comment
or expression of opinion relating to established fact.
c)
Comment or conjecture must not be presented in such a way as to create the
impression that it is established fact.
8.
Bribes and inducements
Media practitioners and media institutions must not publish or suppress a
report or omit or alter vital facts in that report in return for payment of money
or for any other gift or reward.
9.
Pressure or influence
Media practitioners and media institutions must not suppress or distort
information which the public has a right to know because of pressure or
influence from their advertisers or others who have a corporate, political or
advocacy interest in the media institution concerned.
10.
Payment for information
Media practitioners and media institutions must not pay people to act as
information sources unless there is demonstrable public interest value in the
article.
11.
Hatred or violence
a)
Media practitioners and media institutions must not publish material that is
intended or is likely to engender hostility or hatred towards persons on the
grounds of their race, ethnic origin, nationality, gender, sexual orientation,
physical disability, religion or political affiliation.
b)
Media institutions must take utmost care to avoid contributing to the spread of
ethnic hatred or political violence.
12.
Reporting of elections
a)
Media practitioners and media institutions must report on elections in a fair
and balanced manner.
b)
c)
d)
e)
Before reporting a damaging allegation made against a candidate or a political
party, a media practitioner should obtain, wherever possible, a comment from
the candidate or party against whom the allegation has been made especially
where the allegation has been made by an opposing candidate or an opposing
political party.
A media practitioner or media institution must not accept any gift, reward or
inducement from a politician or candidate.
As far as possible, a media practitioner or media institution should report the
views of candidates and political parties directly and in their own words,
rather than as they are described by others.
A journalist must take care in reporting the findings of opinion polls. Any
report should wherever possible include details about the methodology used in
conducting the survey and by whom it was conducted.
13.
Reporting of police investigations and criminal court cases
a)
In our law a person is presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of
law. The media must therefore refrain from publishing articles prejudging the
outcome in criminal cases or seeking to influence the outcome of the cases.
b)
Media institutions are entitled to inform the public about the arrest of suspects
by the police and the trial of persons accused of crimes. They should not,
however, publish the names of suspects until the police have filed formal
charges against them, unless it is in the public interest to do so before formal
criminal charges are laid.
c)
Where a media institution has begun to report a criminal case, it must follow
up and report subsequent developments in the case. For example, it is grossly
unfair to report that a person has been charged with murder and then fail to
report that the person was acquitted. The report of the subsequent
developments must be given due prominence.
14.
Privacy
a)
It is normally wrong for a media practitioner to intrude into and to report upon
a person’s private life without his or her consent.
b)
Reporting on a person’s private life can only be justified when it is in the
public interest to do so. This would include: detecting or exposing criminal
conduct; detecting or exposing seriously anti-social conduct; protecting public
health and safety; and preventing the public from being misled by some
statement or action of that individual, such as where a person is doing
something in private which he or she is publicly condemning.
c)
Media practitioners may probe and publish details about the private moral
behaviour of a public official where this conduct has a bearing upon his or her
suitability as a public official.
15.
Intrusions into grief or shock
a)
In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries should be carried out and
approaches made with sympathy and tact.
b)
Media practitioners or photographers making enquiries at hospitals or similar
institutions should normally identify themselves to a responsible official and
obtain permission before entering non-public areas.
16.
Interviewing or photographing children
a)
Media practitioners should not normally interview or photograph children under
the age of sixteen in the absence of, or without the consent of, a parent or an
adult who is responsible for the children.
b)
In interviewing and photographing children in difficult circumstances or with
disabilities, special sensitivity and sympathy must be used.
c)
Children should not be approached or photographed while at school without
the permission of the school authorities or institutions.
17.
Children in criminal cases
Media institutions must not publish the names of any offender under sixteen
arrested by the police or tried in the criminal courts.
18.
Victims of crime
Media institutions must not identify victims of sexual assaults or publish
material likely to contribute to such identification unless the victim has
consented to such publication or the law authorises them to do so.
19.
Innocent relatives and friends
Media institutions should generally avoid identifying relatives or friends of
persons convicted or accused of crime unless the reference to them is
necessary for the full, fair and accurate reporting of the crime or the legal
proceedings.
20.
Surreptitious gathering of information
a)
Media practitioners should normally use open methods of gathering
information in which they clearly identify themselves as media practitioners.
Generally they should not obtain or seek to obtain information or pictures
through surreptitious methods such as misrepresentation, deception,
subterfuge or undercover techniques.
b)
Surreptitious methods of information gathering may only be used where open
methods have failed to yield information in what is public interest. These
methods may thus be employed where, for example, they will help to detect or
expose criminal activity or will bring to light information that will protect the
public against serious threats to public health or safety.
21.
National security
a)
Media institutions must not prejudice the legitimate national security interests
of Zimbabwe and place at risk members of the Defence Forces who are on
active military duty.
b)
This provision does not prevent the media from exposing corruption in
security or defence agencies or from commenting upon levels of expenditure
on defence.
22.
Plagiarism
A media practitioner must not engage in plagiarism. Plagiarism consists of
making use of another person’s words or ideas without permission and without
proper acknowledgement and attribution of the source of those words or ideas.
23.
Protection of sources
a)
Where a person has agreed to supply information only on condition that his or
her identity remains confidential and the media practitioner agrees to this
condition, the media practitioner must respect this undertaking and refuse to
reveal the identity of the source.
b)
However, the media practitioner may tell the source that his or her identity
might have to be revealed if it becomes clear in court that this information is
needed to prevent or expose serious criminal conduct.